MARIN Supervisor Steve Kinsey has backed away from his plan to have county staff prepare a city-by-city assessment of the depth of our local public pension debt.

Kinsey, who has defended the county's handling of its pension problems, had talked about the county preparing a comparative review of how the county stacks up against Marin cities.

He may have wanted to diffuse criticism that seems to hone in on the county, the largest and most convenient target for critics.

To its credit, the county itself has concluded that the current public pension system is unsustainable. The county is not an innocent bystander in this dilemma. Bumps in public paychecks and pension benefits given before the recession have proven affordable only by cutting public services and raising local fees and taxes.

You don't have to look far to find that local budget cuts or projects are either suspended or delayed because of more taxpayer dollars being needed to pay for current workers' and retirees' pensions and health care benefits.

Kinsey was right that taxpayers deserved to know where their local governments stood. When 15 percent, 20 percent or more of every tax dollar goes to pay for workers' pensions, taxpayers deserve to know the terms and costs of promises made. Actuarial reports are prepared and approved, but rarely translated for public consumption.

Kinsey's proposal drew grumbles from other local politicians who didn't appreciate the possibility of the county survey pointing fingers at their cities, taking the heat off the county by showing that neighbors may be worse off.

Kinsey concluded county staffers have better things to do with their time and talent than launch a study of neighboring agencies' pension problems.

Also, the county has no governmental oversight of Marin cities when it comes to their budget decisions.

But pension information and the projected extent of legacy costs need to be ferreted out of municipal ledgers and made public.

Maybe this information will become public and clear when the county follows through with plans to post pension cost details on the county tax collector's website. The county's ease or difficulty in getting figures from local public agencies — large and small — should prove interesting.

Their cooperation and commitment to making public information public will be telling.

In recent years, too many municipalities have blamed local budget cuts or bumps in taxes and fees partly on "increased employee costs," a bureaucratic euphemism that steers clear of giving the public the dollars-and-cents details of their short- and long-term pension and retiree health-care costs.

Likely, we will hear the same euphemism as Marin cities and local agencies grapple with California Public Employees Retirement System's rising rates.

An argument could have been made that the county was overstepping its role by launching into a countywide study. But putting those agency-by-agency details in front of the public would have been a public service.